Branchage Festival 2009

Jersey film festival to screen The Wizard of Oz in magical drive-in cinema experience

- The Wizard of Oz screened People’s Park Oct 3rd

- As part of Branchage, taking place Oct 1st – 4^th

Branchage Jersey International Film Festival is coming back to the island in October, screening an incredible selection of films in breathtaking

and unusual locations.

Highlights for 2009’s festival will include a spectacular drive-in-cinema showing seminal Judy Garland classic The Wizard Of Oz, a screening of this year’s most shocking film Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist and British Sea Power performing their poignant soundtrack to the renowned 1934 fisherman film Man of Aran.

Branchage Jersey International Film Festival has an unbeatable range of films being screened in truly breathtaking locations, including a beautiful drive-in screening of The Wizard Of Oz at People’s Park on the island, a truly terrifying screening of Antichrist in a scary hut in the Jersey woods and an incredible performance by British Sea Power to the classic black & white fisherman film Man of Aran.

The festival launched in 2008 as a vibrant cross-arts film festival that transformed a number of Jersey’s well recognised landmarks and changed them into unusual screening venues.

Venues secured for the 2009 festival include: Mount Orgueil Castle, Jersey Museum Cinema, The Town Hall/Magistrates Courts, The War Tunnels, Victoria College Boys School Hall, Jersey Opera House. There’ll also be screenings inside the spectacular Barclays Wealth Spiegeltent, plus an incredible drive-in screening at People’s Park.

Branchage aims to create new cinema-going experiences by holding screenings at unusual, atmospheric locations - bringing people into environments they wouldn't usually associate with film, and hand-picking the perfect films to screen in these breathtaking locations.

The festival is also giving a total of £10,000 in awards for filmmakers, across a range of categories.

Festival director Xanthe Hamilton said: “Rolling off the success of the first year Branchage is back in 2009 with even more gusto. This year we have really honed our programming style, and with even more unusual venues we will be taking films into fitting and interesting spaces, offering our audiences a whole new cinema experience.

“The film programme is vast and diverse, and this year we have a very strong educational and industry strand and in true Branchage style a heavy helping of live music and party madness. This year we are proud to be inviting several filmmakers from around the world to present their films in Jersey, and we are exited about our new partnerships with the US based True/False Documentary Film Festival and a radio show coming live out of the festival on air in New Jersey and New York.”

Brasil Documenta is the biggest event dedicated to the aesthetics and documentary filmmaking discussion in Brazil: a one-time opportunity for the sharing of experiences with some of the most important documentary filmmakers and commissioning editors.

Audience festival showing 150 long/short films, 22.000 spectators. Competitions: European Actors Award, Award for European debut & second features. Focus on Music&Film with film concerts, portray of a composer. And: New International & German cinema.

4 DAYS OF BRAZILIAN MULTICULTURALISM For more than 500 years, Brazil has been melting cultures, skin colours, races, traditions, tastes, flavours, histories and everything else into a very large and welcoming pot, and this year the hottest film festival in Toronto will bring this diversity to the Royal Theatre, at the heart of the vibrant and artistic Portuguese/Italian community in the central-west side of the city. Brazil and Canada have more in common than you can imagine. They are both relatively young nations where immigration played, and still plays! -- a very important role. Did you know that Brazil has the highest population of people of African descent outside the African continent? As with the Japanese community established there; it?s the biggest outside Japan. And there was also a time when there were more people speaking Italian on the streets of São Paulo than Portuguese, the official Brazilian language. Everywhere in Toronto, you can feel, see, hear and taste this same multicultural atmosphere. You can sit in a Vietnamese restaurant in the heart of the Caribbean area, reading a European newspaper and overhearing conversations in three or four different languages at the same time, while the radio plays songs from the Middle East... And this is why we decided to have Multiculturalism as our theme for this year, in our screenings as well as the business networking we promote during the festival. So come and celebrate with us the great and diverse Brazilian new wave of cinema. It's our third year and we will love to have you with us!